Posted on: 13-01-05 14:53:48
I don't think we are comparing apples to apples here.
Vandalising several cars is a destruction of property and is punishable in most societies.
You cannot equate it to cooking *in your own house* during a fasting day for a religion you do not follow.
Assuming the story is true, how do we know why the poor guy was cooking?
Maybe he was hungry and wanted to eat.
Restuarants are obviously not going to serve meals on a fasting day, so he had no option but to cook.
Maybe he is a diabetic and needs to eat at a particular time of day - who knows.
What matters is that society is denying the right to a person to cook inside his own house during a certain religious occasion that does not affect him.
To me, that displays intolerance.
And the mode of punishment - that is not a civilised form of punishment by any means.
Punishment has to be commensurate with the severity of the crime.
Imprisonment and fines are ok for destruction of property and indeed a required form of punishment.
But being dragged out of your own house, made to carry the cooking pot on the head and walk all the way to the police station and becoming a public spectacle is inhuman, intolerant and barbaric.
And any society that allows this punishment is indeed barbaric, I don't care what country it is and how "advanced" its infrastructure and technology is.
If someone indeed vandalised my car I would like the person to be arrested by the police and fined or imprisoned.
I will also expect him to pay for the damages.
I will not want his hands cut off, made naked and paraded through Main Street.
Say my neighbour is cooking a type of meat that I don't eat and he knows that.
Technically, my religious sentiments should be harmed.
But will I want him dragged out of the house, paraded through the street with the stew pot on his head and taken to a police station?
I am sorry but I haven't reached that stage of civilisation yet 
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"Mah deah, there is much more money to be made in the destruction of civilization than in building it up."
-- Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind"
Just 2 comments here Chandresh:
1. In regards to the vandalism point that you raised: In any western country (and I imagine in Singapore as well), if you had gone for option d, chances are you, yourself would have been arrested (in Singapore you would probably have also been caned a few times).
2. In regards to the family values issue, I think this interpretation is very cloudy today. I’m sure one would find many Indian families in Canada, where parents desire to make all significant decisions for their children, while in India itself, especially after BPO’s and call centres having taken off, there are ‘children’ who have more disposable income than their parents and are therefore able to demand and receive more independence. Of course, perceptions of how good or bad this is will vary greatly.
‘Taking decisions for your children’ and ‘demanding respect’ themselves are very broad concepts. I don’t think anyone in the western world would ever object, for example, if you were to lay down rules to the effect that a 17 year old has to be home before 10pm, neither would anyone object if you insisted that your 17 year old should not be sexually active. If on the other hand, you believe that beating the daylights out of your wife or your children is a part of ‘Indian values’ and ‘respect’, that would obviously be perceived as being extremist behaviour.........but then shouldn't that be reprehensible behaviour by any standards?
I mean no offence by any of this....
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Orginally posted by crenshaw
If on the other hand, you believe that beating the daylights out of your wife or your children is a part of ‘Indian values’ and ‘respect’, that would obviously be perceived as being extremist behaviour.........but then shouldn't that be reprehensible behaviour by any standards?
I mean no offence by any of this....
I do understand what you are trying to say, but the feeling that I get from this whole discussion is that all of you are fixed onthe notion that what Indian, middle easterns etc do is extremist behaviour while whatever westners do is right and the most sane thing to do. On the other hand, what i am trying to impress is that each culture/nation has its own accentricities and goodness, and we should respect those social behaviour, expectations and norms.
By the way - no offence meant Crenshaw - since you are a man of numbers and percentages and documented things - in my opinion (and I could be wrong though), the number of reported cases of wife and child abuse and organisations set up to take measures against such things would be much higher (no of cases reported to total population) in North America than in India. Does that signify that wife beating and child abuse is more of western values and form of respect , isn't it? We know from general knowledge that it is more in India, but general knowledge is no good in comparison to actual documented and reported statistics, right?
Chandresh
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Chandresh
Advice is free – lessons I charge for!!
Quote:
Orginally posted by chandresh
snip
On the other hand, what i am trying to impress is that each culture/nation has its own accentricities and goodness, and we should respect those social behaviour, expectations and norms.
Yeah and what we are discussing here is the fact that things like beheadings in public and amputation of limbs are against the norms of civilized behaviour in this day and age.....
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Orginally posted by chandresh
snip
the number of reported cases of wife and child abuse and organisations set up to take measures against such things would be much higher (no of cases reported to total population) in North America than in India. Does that signify that wife beating and child abuse is more of western values and form of respect , isn't it? We know from general knowledge that it is more in India, but general knowledge is no good in comparison to actual documented and reported statistics, right?
Chandresh
I think you are making this argument rhetorically.
First of all, I'm not even sure that domestic violence is an offence in India...
Secondly, nothwithstanding the 'noise' that some women's rights groups make in India about domestic violence, it does seem to have general acceptability - women who are abused would not bother to report it, under the impression that men are well within their rights to hit them. The same goes with children.......
It would be a very different scenario in a place like Canada, where because of the higher literacy levels, awareness of rights and the social systems in place, these issues would be reported and prosecuted.
Quote:
Orginally posted by chandresh
I do understand what you are trying to say, but the feeling that I get from this whole discussion is that all of you are fixed onthe notion that what Indian, middle easterns etc do is extremist behaviour while whatever westners do is right and the most sane thing to do. On the other hand, what i am trying to impress is that each culture/nation has its own accentricities and goodness, and we should respect those social behaviour, expectations and norms.
This is a very important point. There is no absolute in culture. Simple things differ over cultures. Laws, social norms, morality all change from place to place and with time. Whether you are going to respect it , simply disagree with it and do nothing or take the step of actually breaking it , is upto you.
Public beheadings and amputations are not the norm in any other country other than Saudi Arabia. Others follow Capital punishment but it is done outside of public AFAIK. India has capital punishment too and so does the most powerful nation on Earth, USA. What do you infer from this? I wil leave it to you.
I am totally against capital punishment. So It is bad whether it is done in public or in an Electric chair (with people viewing) or at the hands of the hangman.
I dont know under which category amputation would fall, but Crimes are considerably less in arab countries than any other place in the world. Again I have seen it. Someone from UAE can tell us about the crime situation there.
Quote:
the number of reported cases of wife and child abuse and organisations set up to take measures against such things would be much higher (no of cases reported to total population) in North America than in India.
Chandresh
The number of wife beatings and child molestation is very high (relatively) in north america. And a lot of them go unreported. I know you are going to ask how one can say that if they are unreported. But you dont always have to have direct evidence. Many of them are reported years after the abuse actually took place. Many manifest themselves in various other ways in society (Girls in Porn industry being one such case).
I was watching an interview witht Kevin bacon who has a movie called THE WOODSMAN. In it he says upto 1 in 4 kids may have been molested at some time in their childhood.
The point I am making is A lot of them go unreported here in NA as in India or any other country. The very nature of the thing is such that victims dont want to make it public.
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I once made a mistake, but I was wrong about it.
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Orginally posted by mercury6
Quote:
Orginally posted by chandresh
I do understand what you are trying to say, but the feeling that I get from this whole discussion is that all of you are fixed onthe notion that what Indian, middle easterns etc do is extremist behaviour while whatever westners do is right and the most sane thing to do. On the other hand, what i am trying to impress is that each culture/nation has its own accentricities and goodness, and we should respect those social behaviour, expectations and norms.
This is a very important point. There is no absolute in culture. Simple things differ over cultures. Laws, social norms, morality all change from place to place and with time. Whether you are going to respect it , simply disagree with it and do nothing or take the step of actually breaking it , is upto you.
This is a really important point. In essence, you cannot apply a mathematical proof to ethics and therefore there's no real way of proving beyond a reasonable doubt whether doing anything is morally right or wrong. Mathematically, you can't even prove if murder is evil.
So in that sense, I would agree that we should accept the customs and norms of another culture as their way of life.
But then ethics are a product of belief, conscience and social conditioning. As we grow up and hopefully mature, we learn quite a few things. Some are taught and some we just ....know. And thus we develop judgement.
And it is this judgement that tells me that if a country does not allow women in politics, it is wrong! It is impossible for me to accept this as just a "way of another culture". Similarly, I don't appreciate being singled out because of my religion. And if religion is the basis of such discrimination, then it should work the other way too, i.e. during Diwali or Christmas, all the citizens of Saudi Arabia should abide and respect the respective customs of people who follow those religions. Does it work that way? Nope. And that's just plain unfair.
I just can't accept unfairness as the "way of another culture".
Also, I don't believe the debate is between eastern culture and western culture. To me, its more of a matter of right vs. wrong. Democracy in India, despite all its flaws and hypocrisy, is still years ahead of a country like Saudi Arabia. Govt. is still subject to scrutiny and social expression is not stifled in the womb.
The prevalance of law and order in Saudi Arabia isn't exactly a very big plus if you consider the negatives. Its like a discplinanian dad who always walks around with a whip in his hand boasting how well behaved his 7 year old kid is.
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Are you there?
Nothing in this post in relation with the subject we are discussing - that seems settled with Hg6 and BL's post. But do your guys in Toronto watch Millionaire?
Can you imagine my suprise when last evening while laying the dinner table, I suddenly saw question being asked about Michael Fay - and why he was punished - this is the case I had written yesterday regarding Vanadalism in Singapore? this is classic case of 'bad nahi badnam sahi, naam to hua'!
Chandresh
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Chandresh
Advice is free – lessons I charge for!!
